One Hundred Million
Is There Anything Appearing Anywhere
Am I Imagining That I'm Doing Something
Are All My Problems Based On The Assumption

"The I thought, the You
thought,
the Me thought, the Body
which has no power of it's own,
which has no independent nature,
which could not exist
without the presence of awareness,
is believed to be
the Self-Identity, the True-Identity,
the Self-Center, the Reference Point.
Why? Because it is not questioned.
These songs question it."

- Bill East

THE NATURE OF MAN
ACCORDING TO THE VEDANTA

by John Levy

Reviewed by Rodney Stevens

I have long been curious about The Nature of Man According to
The Vedanta. I first heard about it nearly a decade ago when
I was still reading the works of Jean Klein, Rene Guenon, and
Paul Brunton. Then Levy's name began to pop up more often five or
six years later when I was attempting (with mixed success) to
examine the writings of author's teacher, the Indian sage Krishna
Menon (1883-1959).

I found precious little about Levy--who died in 1976--on the Web,
and Amazon had only one "customer review" of his book.
But having finally received and read my 110-page review copy, I
can report that it doesn't disappoint. In the autobiographical
Preface, Levy speaks of finding--after years of spiritual
exploration--"the solution" in nondual Vedanta. He
beautifully notes that through this experiential teaching, you
come to see "that you have only to become aware of what you
actually are, that is to say, absolute consciousness..."

In thirty concise chapters, the author details how everything
from the ego and the waking/sleeping/ dreaming states to memory
and the concepts of space and time make their appearance in
Presence. He even has a chapter on "Absurd Questions,"
where he addresses the inanity of queries about the origin of the
world and the orgin of personal identification in pure awareness.
Levy justly asserts that rather than focusing on these
speculative issues, we should turn our "undivided attention
to the fundamental problem, 'What am I?' Once this has been
solved, all lesser problems will have also been solved."

More often than not, Levy's prose is direct and accessible. But
when he is weighing in on such highbrow matters as the
"Physiological Aspect of Tridimensionality" and
"The Restitution of the Self," his writing can be a tad
dry. Still, his pointing is singular and true, leveling always,
as it does, on awareness itself.

Over the decades, The Nature of Man According to the Vedanta
has duly become a quiet classic in nondual literature. And its
acclaim is deserved, given its breath of topics, its mostly
straight-forward prose, and--of course--its truth about Truth.